Over the past year, Miami Dolphins quarterback Tua Tagovailoa has received a lot of criticism regarding his play.
In 2021, a year where Tagovailoa didn’t start five games due to injury, he completed 67.8% of his passes for 2,653 yards with 16 touchdowns and 10 interceptions while adding three touchdowns on the ground.
Those aren’t exactly the numbers that you’d wish for a quarterback taken with the fifth overall pick. However, it’s been acknowledged by most that Tagovailoa wasn’t in the best situation to succeed last year.
One analyst that has talked about Tagovailoa as much if not more than anyone else is NBC Sports’ Chris Simms. Simms is currently releasing his top 40 quarterback rankings, and Tagovailoa came in at No. 29.
Simms cites his leadership, charisma, athleticism and “slickness” with the ball as some of the positives about his game. He also praises the former Crimson Tide quarterback’s accuracy and timing on his passes. However, his main slight is that Tagovailoa doesn’t have a strong arm.
“Except he just does not have a strong arm,” Simms said.”He can’t throw with any power really… There’s a lot of big-time throws and yards left on the field on a consistent basis with Tua because one they can’t call it or two he turns it down… The lack of outside-the-numbers throws is pretty eye-popping. And, they’re not doing it because they’re going ‘Wait we want to throw it here.’ They’re doing it because ‘We can’t trust him to get enough on the ball and make the right throw out there. He doesn’t have enough arm.'”
Simms has yet to release the full list, but fans will probably go crazy with some of the names that he has ranked ahead of Tagovailoa to this point, including Marcus Mariota at No. 28, Mitchell Trubisky at No. 27 and Jameis Winston at No. 26.
Tagovailoa was in a tough situation last year. Between injuries, struggles along the offensive line, inconsistent/inept play-calling and constant rumors about Deshaun Watson taking his job, there was a lot that he had to deal with. Simms acknowledges that as well.
Now, with an offensive-minded head coach, a new system and a stable of new, incredibly fast weapons, the Dolphins are hoping that Tagovailoa proves Simms wrong and shows he’s better than the 29th-best quarterback in the league.
